This weekend I helped my daughters make "stepping stones" for Daddy and their grandmas for Christmas. It has now been over 24 hours, and they still don't appear to be dry--they are still damp on the towel that I changed out at about 18 hours post-project; one has broken =( and the others' edges seem very fagile and the clay/plaster is very flakeydusty. Any thoughts? The gems seem to be holding, but my 5 year old still wants to paint them some. I am afraid to wrap them for fear of them being completely shattered by the time they are open. I am also having serious doubts as to whether or not they will hold up in the garden if they are still holding this much moisture. I did not make them too thin or too thick--followed the directions, etc. Anyone have experience with this project? Any thoughts? I dread having to redo the one for grandma, but we can't have one for one grandma and not the other and the countdown is on!!! The 5 year old is crushed that the one is broken, so I hate to put her through the hassle of making another one if it's just going to happen again. Please advise ASAP!!
my guess is with winter time they're not drying as fast as normal... give it another 24 hours, perhaps lay a dry towel on top to slow the drying process but not add any extra water to the air. maybe let your daughter paint it while it's still in the mold?
Not sure what you made your stepping stones out of but everything I have read said to use Quikrete ready to use quick setting concrete. It takes 48 hours before you can release from the mold. Here are a few sites that I found. Good luck, they are going to be a wonderful gift for the grandparents.
Merry Christmas!
Renee
http://www.ehow.com/how_###-###-####_make-stepping-stones...
http://familycrafts.about.com/cs/steppingstones/a/040201b...
Some students made stepping stones for me for Christmas one year. I put them in the garden that spring. By the end of that summer, most of the gems had fallen out. By the next year, they were broken and there were no more gems! This fall, we threw them out. So, not sure if yours are made from the same type of stuff, but I don't know how well they really hold up.
I don't have much advice for the moisture problem, but I would recommend they don't put them outside. We've done one for two years in a row for Grandma and she put the older one out in the garden during the summer and it's cracked and faded. It ended up getting thrown out in the Fall. The other one is in a display stand we bought for her and it still looks great.
We bought the kits at a craft store and did them last spring. We had the same problem with them not drying. So we had to give them as gifts when they were really still wet, and still in the plastic molds. They were still wet days later. I think that they eventually dried, and I did see them out in our families' houses later. I never asked about them, but I do know that none of them put the stepping stones outside, which I think is a good thing. We didn't have any problems with them breaking, but maybe that was because we waited so long to try to take them out of the molds? Maybe try to do one again, but decrease the amount of water?
